


An Ending

by SeveralSmallHedgehogs



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Bad Ending, Blood, Everyone's dead except Caleb, Fluff, Gen, sorta - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-09-20 16:30:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17026167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SeveralSmallHedgehogs/pseuds/SeveralSmallHedgehogs
Summary: The end of Caleb Widogast, as seen by the heroes who finally defeat him.





	An Ending

**Author's Note:**

> As requested.
> 
> My original version of this turned into the end of a Book 1 in a series. I edited it some.
> 
> (I am working on another one to add after this, and I'm probably gonna call Another Ending and make it a series)

The end of the battle was as quick as it was unexpected. Widogast threw a spell that slammed the group’s warlock backwards into the wall, and as he was drawing his arm back to attack again, the rogue darted in and stabbed. Her knife sank almost to its hilt low in his ribcage. Out of sheer panic and pain, the wizard grabbed her shoulder and shoved her backwards, his hand burning through the thick material of her tunic. She darted away, wincing at the new burn.

The swordsman raised her weapon, readying herself for another attack, but casting the spell seemed to have taken the last of Widogast’s strength. He stumbled back against the wall slid to the ground. He had one hand to the new wound in his side.

The heroes tensed, preparing for another attack—but try as he might, Widogast couldn’t seem to get to his feet. He first struggled to push off the floor, and when that didn’t work, he grabbed the table next to him and attempted to pull himself up. But his hand slipped off the edge, and he toppled over. And he remained there on the floor, breathing heavily, slumped over on one elbow.

The swordsman stepped forward and put the point of her sword under Widogast’s chin. “Are you done yet?” she growled.

He kept his eyes on the floor and said nothing. Blood was trickling from one corner of his mouth.

“Hey. Look at me when I’m talking to you.” She crouched down and shoved him—and immediately the leather in her gauntlet caught fire. She yelled and fell backwards, frantically scrabbling it off her hand. She threw it on the ground, where the flames flickered and died. When she looked up at Widogast she saw him smiling with grim humor.

She leaped to her feet again in fury and raised her sword, but before she could kill him, the warlock stepped forward and put a hand out in front of her. “The bounty,” he reminded her. “Ikithon wants him alive, remember?”

 Widogast made a low noise that sounded almost like a snort of laughter. “Ikithon wants me alive,” he muttered to himself, like it was a joke.

“That’s right,” declared the cleric, stepping forward. “We’re taking you to the capital, where you’re going to answer for everything you’ve done.”

Widogast gave another laugh, but this time, it turned into a cough halfway through. “Oh, I doubt it,” he said, pushing himself upright. The heroes tensed, but he wasn’t getting up—he just shifted to sit against the wall. “I’m bleeding out pretty quickly.”

The swordsman kicked the cleric’s shin, not all that gently. “Heal him,” she ordered. And the cleric moved to oblige, but Widogast feebly waved him off.

“Don’t bother,” he said. “You’ll need your magic for other things.”

“Heal him,” demanded the warlock. “He needs to face some kind of justice. He killed _twenty people._ That we _know_ of.” He looked down at Widogast, his expression twisted with hatred.

Widogast’s gaze slid to the floor. If they hadn't known he was too monstrous to feel anything anymore, they would have thought he seemed almost sorrowful.

The rogue frowned. Now, without the look of desperate determination he’d worn throughout their battle, Widogast looked… almost familiar. Somewhere far back in her memories, she recalled smiles, a tearful hug goodbye, and the melody from the music box she kept under her bed back at home. Before she could say anything, though, Widogast spoke.

“I did kill them,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry. I know what it’s like to grieve.”

The cleric crouched next to him. “So I want to know, why would you _do it?_ ”

Widogast blinked slowly. “I wanted to see them again,” he rasped.

“Who?”

He put his head back against the stones. “My parents,” he said. He paused, and then began to rattle off a series of names. “And Beauregard. Mollymauk. Fjord, Jester, Caduceus, Yasha…” He took a shaky breath and closed his eyes. “Nott.”

The fighter tightened her grip on her sword. “Are those names supposed to mean something to us?”

“No,” Widogast mumbled. “They were just… people I couldn’t protect.”

The rogue stepped forward. “How—did they—die?” she asked haltingly, piecing the question together from earlier conversations with locals.

All eyes turned towards her. Widogast searched her face for a moment, and then a heavy sense of recognition dawned over his features. His shoulders drooped. “Mollymauk was killed,” he told her quietly. “When we first tried to rescue our friends from a group of slavers that took them in the night. North of here.”

The warlock scowled. “We don’t care how they—”

“I want to know,” interrupted the rogue, using the cleric’s voice. She didn’t take her eyes off of Widogast. “I want to know—how—did they—die.”

Widogast swallowed. “Beauregard… was trying to protect us,” he said. “She gave us the time we needed to escape. She said she was going to catch up, but… she never did." He shut his eyes briefly. “We lost… Fjord and Jester on the same day. Fjord fell, and Jester went back to try to save him.”

The rogue’s fists clenched. She’d noticed. She’d noticed when the messages stopped coming.

 Widogast put his head back against the wall. He was no longer looking her in the eye; he couldn’t seem to gather the strength. “Yasha was always in and out of our group, and after a while, she stopped coming back. And Caduceus… you didn’t know him. He left, too. He went looking for help and didn’t return.” He exhaled. "I don't know what happened to either of them."

He paused again. “And Nott—” His voice cracked. For a second, he couldn’t seem to speak. He took a shaky breath and tried again. “Nott was killed.”

The rogue stood there for a moment, trembling from head to toe with an intense emotion she couldn’t name. She felt angry. She felt betrayed. She’d always wondered why they’d never come back, and now she knew, and she also knew that this feeling pushing against the inside of her chest was most likely grief.

She turned and walked away to stand facing the wall, her arms crossed.

“I’m sorry,” Widogast murmured to her back.

“Shut up,” the warlock snapped. “Look, none of this matters. We’re taking you in, okay? You’re _evil._ Why should we _care_ who you lost, or how?”

“I don’t see why _you_ would,” was the bleak response. Then Widogast lifted his head a little to address the warlock. “You are only interested in my research, _ja?_ Bringing back the dead. Turning back time.”

The warlock screwed up his expression and dragged the cleric backwards so he could get in Widogast’s face. “I’m _not,_ because it’s _impossible!_ ”

Widogast just looked at him. His eyes were tired. “It is not impossible,” he murmured.

The warlock scoffed. “What, you’re telling me you figured out how to bring people back from the dead?”

“I did,” was the simple reply.

“Then why aren’t they all here, huh? Didn’t they want to come back?”

Widogast shook his head and fell silent for a moment, and his gaze once again dropped to the floorstones. Blood was spreading from his wounds, but he didn’t acknowledge it. After a long moment, he whispered, “I was too afraid to know what they’d see when they looked at me.”

Then, he abruptly coughed. Blood dribbled down his front, and when he tried to inhale again, his chest rattled and he winced in pain. 

“Hey,” the fighter began, but Widogast coughed again and crumpled in on himself, and he kept coughing. It was horrible, wet coughing. The fighter dropped to one knee on his other side. “Hey, hey, hey! Come on, can I get some healing over here?” She waved at the cleric, who scrambled forward again and shoved the warlock aside. But before he could do anything, Widogast grabbed the collar of the cleric’s coat, weakly holding him back. “Leave it,” he wheezed. “Leave me—” He coughed again, and his hand dropped from the cleric’s coat and he collapsed onto his side. The party watched in silence ranging from grim to horrified as the wizard they’d been hired to capture faded from coughing to gasping, and then to shaking… and finally went still.

They were all quiet for a moment after he ceased to move. Finally the warlock got to his feet, but the cleric remained where he was, staring.

“Hey.” The fighter shook his shoulder. “Get up. You’ve got blood all over you.”

The cleric looked down. “Oh,” he said distantly. “I do.”

The rogue, who had watched from the wall, stepped past the others and crouched in front of Widogast. Without a word, she reached out and brushed the wizard’s eyes closed with her fingers.

The warlock snorted. “Wouldn’t have thought you were the sentimental type,” he said. “Weren’t your family butchers?”

She didn’t reply; she just studied the dead man’s face. More memories floated to the surface of her mind: a knife, handed to her by a very large, very green man; slit-pupiled yellow eyes crinkled at the corners in a smile; deep purple horns glittering with jewelry in the sunlight; their backs as they disappeared down the road.

At last, she stood again and walked towards the door. But she halted before she reached it. “Hey,” she said over her shoulder.

They all turned in time to see several translucent figures step out of the doorway and pass by them. One, a stocky, muscular young woman, strode up to Widogast’s body and reached down as if to help him up. A phantom arm rose from the wizard’s shape and grasped her hand. She pulled, and the ghostly form of Caleb Widogast got to his feet, wavered a little, and then solidified.

The others surrounded him immediately; the monk woman punched his arm, and the tiefling in a long coat slung an arm across his shoulders, and a small creature in a hood threw her arms around his waist. Widogast picked up the small one and hugged her tightly. She wrapped her arms around his neck and buried her face in his shoulder. The rest of the forms joined, wrapping their arms around him until he was barely visible.

And then, after a long moment, they released him and stepped away. The last one to let go was the short one. Widogast set her down on her feet, and she turned and looked around at the gathered heroes. Her expression was half covered by a porcelain doll’s face that she wore like a mask, and all they could see was her yellow eyes.

They thought she was going to say something, but she didn’t. She only met each of their eyes in turn, holding each one’s gaze intently for just a moment, communicating an emotion that none of them could agree on later. And then she turned back to Widogast and gave him another hug. He moved to return the embrace, but she dissolved into silvery mist.

And then, one by one, the rest of the group dissipated until only Widogast’s form remained. He watched the last of them vanish, and for a long moment, he remained where he was, his eyes on the empty space where they’d stood.

Then he looked back to the heroes. He, too, said nothing; only looked at his desk and then at the party, and something in his expression felt almost like an apology.

And then he faded away.


End file.
